‘The Shrouds’ Trailer: Vincent Cassel Is Haunted by the Search for Home in David Cronenberg’s Latest

Diane Kruger plays dual roles alongside Guy Pearce in Cronenberg's statement on grief amidst widowhood.

Vincent Cassel is exploring grief the David Cronenberg way in the highly-anticipated drama “The Shrouds.”

Cassel stars as widower Karsh who creates a program called GraveTech to allow for mourners to monitor their late loved ones’ decay via shrouds. Yet when multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife (Diane Kruger), are desecrated, he has to find the perpetrators. “The Brutalist” star Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt also are among the cast.

Cronenberg previously told Variety that he wrote the film while “experiencing the grief of the loss of my wife, who died seven years ago. It was an exploration for me because it was not just a technical exercise, it was an emotional exercise.”

Cassel’s Karsh is a stand-in of sorts for writer/director Cronenberg, who cited how the character has a “perverse, morbid, grotesque” way of grieving by watching his late wife’s body decompose in her grave. Cronenberg further called death “another form of relationship.”

“The Shrouds” was originally conceived as a series at Netflix, with Léa Seydoux set for the role now played by Kruger. Seydoux exited due to scheduling conflicts.

“The Shrouds” premiered in competition at Cannes 2024, where IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in the review that he had a “delayed appreciation” of its plot. The feature was listed it as an IndieWire Critic’s Pick.

“Its story only makes sense with the detached perspective that might begin to develop in the time between the death of a loved one and the funeral service at which they’re laid to rest. Body is reality, Cronenberg likes to say, but what becomes of that reality when the body in question is buried six feet under the ground?” Ehrlich wrote. “‘The Shrouds’ is therefore a film about Karsh’s pursuit of a new home, which is made impossible by his aching desire to return to the old one. It’s a spiraling maze to nowhere in which the only way out is to make peace with the fact that there isn’t one, and every plot detail that Cronenberg throws into the mix amounts to a red herring in the hero’s quest to stop a feeling that he carries with him wherever he goes. Avoiding the reality only complicates the reality; the shrouds don’t allow Karsh to see his dead wife more clearly, they obscure his ability to see real life at all.”

“The Shrouds” premieres in NY and LA theaters April 18, and opens nationwide April 25 from Sideshow and Janus films. Check out the trailer below.